DC vs DCU

Tonight’s bedtime conversation with Sam (5).

SAM. Is tomorrow a school day?
DAD. No.  It’s Presidents’ Day.  Do you know who the Presidents are?
SAM. Yes.
DAD. Yeah?  Can you name one?  Who was a President?
SAM. (patiently, as though to a dull toddler) George Washington.
DAD. Do you know what the President does?

This Sam is less clear on.  Which is just as well at this embarrassing point in our nation’s history.

I start to say that if the United States is the DC Universe, you could look at George Washington as Superman, but then I realize that if I say that, the next question will be “Then who is Batman?” and I don’t have a clear answer for that.

Clearly, George Washington is Superman.  He was the first, arguably the most important, debatably the best, and most importantly the “original.”  But then, indeed, who is Batman?  Is it Adams, contemporary of Washington and close second in defining the young nation’s ethos?  Or is it, say, Lincoln, the most beloved of the presidents, the tall, dark, brooding loner president, the tortured insomniac, haunted by the deaths of his loved ones, the one who broke the rules for the sake of the greater good?

Does that make Wonder Woman Thomas Jefferson, the warrior for peace, architect of our most precious freedoms?  Or is she more like Franklin Roosevelt in that regard, giving our enemies a bitter fight while generously giving our poorest and weakest a fighting chance of their own?  That would make Truman Green Lantern, saving the world with his magical do-anything world-saving device.

And who would be an analog for colorless chair-warmers like Millard Fillmore and Chester Arthur?  Are these men Booster Gold and Blue Beetle?  Clearly Rorshach is Richard Nixon, Alan Moore practically begs us to see the parallels, but what of Kennedy, Nixon’s shining twin?  Is that Ozymandius, or is he a simpler man, a purer spirit, someone like Captain Marvel?  Or is he Superboy and his “best and brightest” cabinet the Legion of Superheroes in the 31st century?

And how to categorize corrupt, incompetent disasters like Grant, Harding, Hoover and Bush II?  Is Reagan Plastic Man, effortlessly escaping ceaseless attack with a smile and a quip?  And what about Johnson, weak on foreign policy but a genius in the domestic realm, who is that?  Or William Henry Harrison, who caught pneumonia during his inaugural parade and died a month later?  Or Grover Cleveland, who served, left office, then came back and served again?

Or perhaps the metaphor is imprecise, perhaps the US presidency is unlike the DCU after all — perhaps it’s more like the X-Men, where weak individuals are granted extraordinary powers and yet are still hampered by their combative attitudes toward each other and their under-developed social skills.  In the X-Men you have heroes who might not turn out to be heroes after all.  And vice versa.

Or maybe we’re looking in the wrong direction, perhaps the US presidents aren’t the “good guys” at all.  While Bush II has so far shunned the metal mask and hooded cloak of Dr. Doom, he has certainly succeeded in turning the US into his own private Latveria.  And any given Republican of the 20th century can lay claim to being the Lex Luthor of the bunch, brimming with brilliant, short-sighted schemes to make himself rich while destroying other people’s lives and property.

And, if they were given the choice, is there any serious doubt as to whether Americans would elect a comic-book character over a living, breathing human being?